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“…Would the pictures coming into such a dark room but stay there, and lie so orderly as to be found upon occasion, it would very much resemble the understanding of a man, in reference to all objects of sight, and the ideas of them.” - John Locke : An Essay Concerning Human Understanding - What does a city look like splayed on a table? Do you represent it by all its parts, its foundation, its history, or the millions of lives that went into making it? What components are left out? What are the simulacra and simulation that define the experience living there? What nuances have been historically lost, and what erasures are taking place? Something like a city is time made manifest. If a thing can be represented by its parts, time can be made solid in the things it forges, and become static Time is things. Yet, this immeasurable, impenetrable, immaculate force doesn't exist in any kind of singular way. How does time live in people? In an act? The act, the object (its history) that represents a person's life- who is worthy of documentation in the era of ubiquity? - When I taught an intro to photography class, I would start with the idea of pigment being used before images- that this physical manifestation of a representational mechanism predates our subspecies. And how the lens changed everything. The influence of optics cemented the linear perspective on fine art, in the west , for ~ five hundred years. Whereas if you look at something like a fresco or a Chinese scroll the perspective shifts with the viewer. An istoria proposes the viewer in a locked position. Fixed. Every image is an account, a record, and fixed in its perspective of its time. Thus, every object and its reminiscence is fixed in time by its viewer. We assume, affirm, attest that our viewer is stuck in time. Static in place. The viewer is not stuck in a position, and this remains an unexplored dimension. Untold, unseen elements: “Your audience is a moving target,” to borrow from my more business minded friends. Anyway, the word kaleidoscopic is pretty overused. Alexander Gouletas
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